Time Lapse: Can you name this narrow Providence building? (We can't)

Friday

Aug 15, 2014 at 12:01 AM

This puzzle is different -- we'll show you a 1920 story about the demolition of "the long, narrow, two-story wooden building," but even then the Journal didn't know what else to call it. Did it have a name? Please post the answer in comments at the

By Sheila Lennon

This week, Time Lapse is very different: We won't be back Sunday with the answer because we don't know the answer! We hope you do.

As always, clicking the photo above will open it much larger in a new window. We'll tell you everything we know about it, but the mystery this week is not its location: It's its name.

You probably know exactly where we are in this 1920 scene: the east side of Dorrance Street in downtown Providence, between Fulton and Westminster Streets, with City Hall in the background. The occasion of our August 3, 1920 story, headlined, "Providence's Picturesque Tabloid Business Block Makes Way for March of Progress," is the demolition of this structure, along with the Hotel Dorrance, to make way for the Woolworth Building, which still occupies that space today.

What we know

The looming building in our photo is the Hotel Dorrance, --"for men only," according to this June, 1920 Providence Magazine story about the upcoming demolitions.

Our narrow shopping mall was built in 1858 by George A. Howard on a strip of land he bought as a remnant of a street widening, as were most of these narrow parcels.

The Journal uses the phrase "tabloid block" as a generic for such narrow structures, but I can't find the phrase used elsewhere.

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The 1920 story at right notes that the building was eight feet deep, the stores seven feet deep. The second floor was used to store inventory that didn't fit in the tiny shops, which commanded high rents and did big business due to their central location. Nearly a thousand people came each day, according to one jeweler, "including those who drop in to say good morning and regulate their watches."

"The block was identified with watch making and repairing, jewelry, tobacco and the sale of periodicals," we read, but there was also a pawnshop, a candy store, liquid refreshments and a "joke and puzzle" shop.

The narrow block of stores appears in yellow in the 1918 Providence plat map, which indicates a wooden structure. Rather than show a building name, it's labeled simply Jesse Howard, as though it were his home. He's an heir of George Howard, who erected the building.

Here's the 1919 city directory listing for the block, showing its shopowners and their trades, and, to its right, the snippet of the 1918 map; click it to go to larger version with more streets.

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What do you know?

We don't know what the building was called, but the comments on previous stories continually show us that many of our readers know more about Rhode Island history than we do.

Often we'll also hear from descendents of those who owned old Rhode Island buildings, such as the narrow George C Arnold Building on Washington St., or who worked in shops in these buildings, and we'll learn more from them.

We'd love to hear from anyone with the answer. Please post it in comments below, and we'll praise you to the rafters when we read it.

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Updated Aug. 22, 2014:

We heard from many of our longtime Time Lapse readers and history buffs last week as we tried to find out the name of the eight-foot-wide shopping mall that graced Dorrance Street in front of the Hotel Dorrance (Time Lapse: Can you name this narrow Providence building? (We can't)
).

We also found a photo of both buildiings in our archives, at right, shot from City Hall, giving us a view from the other direction. It's undated, but the cars suggest it's close to their 1920 demolition date. (The photos may be enlarged by clicking them.)

Collector Larry DePetrillo also emailed a small version of this photo as well as the illustrations at the bottom of this page and plat maps for several years -- in all of them, it didn't have a name. He added, "The prov. city directories aways listed names of buildings, halls, and
blocks -- attached is the section for 1919 -- it may be that it never had
an official name. "

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Cliff Coutcher of Boca Raton, Fla., sends along a photo (at right) from the John O. Pastore collection at Providence College that shows "Patrick Mulvey Successor to Livingston," with horse-drawn carriages rather than automobiles at the curb. City Hall was inaugurated in 1878, and the Hotel Dorrance bore that date on its facade, so this is probably a turn-of-the-century photo.

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Greg Baltazar found an ad in the 1877 Providence Tax Book
(below right): "I
think this ad from 1877 refers to 23, 25, 27 Dorrance Street as being
part of the Howard Building. The Howard Building would have been across
the street, but maybe this narrow building was still considered part of
the Howard Block. I would call it the Howard Building Annex, but as
far as I can tell, it was never referred to as such.

The very knowledgeable Theodore Coleman posted two comments:

"The March 1917 edition of Providence Magazine (page 160) refers to it
as, ...the shabby little building ... between Westminster street and
City Hall...The Dorrance street lot was leftover from the extension of
that highway many years ago."

And, later,

"From its initial construction through 1889 the shops had even numbered
addresses. In 1889 they were 16 thru 38 and the southernmost shop also
had a Westminster street address. By 1899 the addresses had switched to
odd numbers, 29 thru 49 and the Westminster address was gone.

"None of the tenants listed in the 1889 and 1899 Providence Directories
have a building name associated with their street address, and the one
advert I found on page 979 of the 1889 Directory also only listed the
street number.

Ted gets what must be the last word:

"John (Hutchins) Cady mentions the building in a footnote on
page 166 of his authoritative history of the development of Providence (The Civic and Architectural Development of Providence, 1636-1950).
He does not give the building a name. If John Cady didn't know the
building's name, it must not have one."

One more mystery:

But wait, there's more. As mentioned above, Larry DePetrillo sent two illustrations. I'm scratching my head about the lower one, as the narrow mall predates the Hotel Dorrance by more than 20 years.